


Baby Mine

by agentsimmons



Series: Mutants and Monsters [3]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Fusion, Bruce & Hulk Interaction, Bruce Banner Feels, F/M, Family Fluff, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fatherhood, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Crack, Gen, Kid Fic, Kid Raven | Mystique, Non-Linear Narrative, Parent Bruce Banner, Pre-Avengers (2012), Pre-Slash, Protective Bruce
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-01
Updated: 2016-02-01
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:39:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5821699
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentsimmons/pseuds/agentsimmons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bruce Banner has been learning to walk a fine line between rage and serenity. He just never expected it to lead to this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Baby Mine

**Author's Note:**

> Still floored. And meaning to get to replying to comments, promise! So, um, I rewrote this entry about three times. I wanted to jump to a point in the timeline with Bruce, but in order to fill the prompter's wish of Bruce being Raven's dad plus this being way before Avengers, Bruce's canon had to be seriously altered and other creative licenses/choices had to be taken/made. And, I'm very unsure about the ones I finally settled on. But I'm tired of second guessing and overthinking so here it is :3 (Original prompt can be found in Series Summary.) 
> 
>  
> 
> **This one takes place some time in 2001. More about the, likely bizarre, creative choices in end note.**

Bruce paces back and forth in the hall of the small clinic. He breathes deeply and works on maintaining his hard fought method of control. He's angry at himself for making this mistake no matter how normal his life had seemed again, and he's scared of the consequences of a man like himself having this responsibility, and his heart beats fast enough that at one time the monster inside of him would have already taken over. But he sends a message deep into his subconscious to appease the beast and hopefully remind him that they are safe, if not a little foolish for letting it get this far. Of course, that's not the Hulk’s fault. It's his.

Inside the small, nearby room, a woman he cares about, even if he can't sincerely say he's in love with her, is in the throes of a difficult childbirth. She is the same woman who along with her family and village has taught him to trust his heart, to trust himself, to find that place within him between rage and serenity, and how to make peace with the Hulk.

That peace is sometimes shaky at best, much like right now, he sometimes still believes it can't last which is why attempting to settle down and have a home feels like a mistake, and he sometimes still fears that _he_ is the monster that unwittingly destroys everyone who gets close to him, but after nearly a handful of years running and fighting and wishing he could just put a bullet in his mouth and be done with it, the serenity and normalcy he has managed to find in the past two is too much like a drug for him to walk away from it.

"I know you do not love me. Not in the way you have loved another or may love another still," she had said to him in her native tongue while he had struggled to deny himself her advances. "But you care enough to want me. I can sense it. Let me touch your heart. There are things you want that I can give."

"I do not get the things I want," he had told her firmly, also in her tongue as he had picked up on the language out of necessity. "It is for the best that way."

She had laughed softly at him. "You confuse self-control with self-denial," she'd admonished. "You will destroy your balance that way." He had taken a chance and trusted her wisdom.

Maybe that is why the child’s cry that suddenly rings out in the other room is the first sound of his own flesh and blood. Maybe that is why he couldn't leave, couldn't run, when he'd found out he was to be a father. Maybe that is why he quickly rushes into the room to meet his daughter.

The first thing he sees is the midwife looking at her assistant in wide eyed shock. The midwife looks at him as if afraid he will be angry with her - the entire village is aware of his condition after all - and then quickly ushers the assistant out of the room muttering her apologies and saying she will find the doctor.

“What's wrong?” Bruce asks as worry settles into his chest like a boulder around his neck. “What's wrong with her?”

“Nothing,” comes the tired and hoarse whisper of his child's mother. “There is nothing wrong with her. She is beautiful. She is special.” She looks down at their daughter with a teary smile.

Bruce furrows his brow and approaches the bedside. That's when she carefully removes the swaddling blanket just enough to show him. His own eyes go wide at the sight of not a flushed color somewhere between his skin and the baby's mother's, rather a rich blue that no doubt is what startled the midwife. Confused and curious Bruce gently takes his daughter into his arms and uncovers her a little more to see the blue skin is all over. She is also covered with a reptilian-like scale in some places. The small tuft of hair on her newborn head is a fiery red that contrasts against the blue.

Suddenly her tiny eyes blink open and Bruce meets with a dazzling yellow-gold. His breath catches in his throat, not at the unnatural state of his daughter but at the realization in that moment that she's _his_. Maybe he should be more alarmed, but he's just too overwhelmed by his love for her. No matter her appearance she's beautiful just like her mother had said.

“Hello, Raven,” he calls her by the name they'd agreed on a few short weeks prior. “I'm your daddy.”

Raven blinks again and makes a small noise as her little body shifts in his arms. Then, much to Bruce's surprise, Raven's skin slowly changes from blue to a color like his own. Her eyes darken to brown and her hair to near-black. Even as he stares at her in awe, while his scientific mind whirs, it dawns on him that she's just taken an appearance to match closer to his own.

"She's a mutant," he whispers in realization. She yawns and he kisses her head before passing her back to her tired mother.

He stands at the bedside contemplating the matter. The government denies the existence of the theoretical X-genome. Even he as a scientist had been uncertain of the theorized mutations it's said to induce, but there is his proof, lying asleep at her mother's chest, that it must exist. Raven is a mutant, apparently with the ability to shift her appearance, and perhaps it his own doing now that he himself has been mutated by gamma radiation.

He wonders if he's condemned her to a miserable existence, if she'll grow to resent him, if this is his punishment for wanting things he's not supposed to have. But then she makes another soft, mewling noise as she shifts in her sleep and her skin is a beautiful blue again.

It doesn't matter what she is. She's still his.

**Author's Note:**

> So in case it was unclear this establishes an alternate canon for Bruce where he becomes Hulk in mid 90s (I may have been watching the 90s cartoon while trying to decide on Bruce's canon for this this oops) and then goes on the run and resettles/finds a modicum of control in a conveniently ambiguous foreign village - heavily inspired by how comics/the cartoons love to use the ambiguous foreign village trope for giving characters random backstory. I hope to weave more bits and pieces of Bruce's backstory in over the course of these ficlets since, unlike Tony, he is already also Hulk when Raven comes along. But wow I hope I didn't lose everybody now after all of the wonderful comments :3
> 
> As for Raven's mother, she is also left ambiguous for now at least. Partly because of laziness and partly because I think I know who I intended her to be in my mind, but wasn't one-hundred percent sold yet. I only knew that it wouldn't be Betty since canonically he and Betty never have kids together - and to be honest I couldn't figure out how to make it Betty.


End file.
